Just read the following interesting story.
Ill give you a heads up this post will probably be pretty long but I had to
share this with you guys as I am pretty proud of myself. The event started
yesterday morning and I just got home at nearly 5 AM. Its a memory I will
NEVER forget... I will do my best to shorten it to the main points.
My parents home was burglarized about 10AM here yesterday morning on 8-23-11
. This was a HUGE shock. They live in a very nice neighborhood, 20 years and
ZERO neighbors have ever had a problem. My dad came home from golfing to
find the back door forced open and their 4,000 square-foot home completely
picked through. The job was pretty professional, they knew the places to
look where to not waste time. They didn't tear up the house too bad but the
found all the good stuff, my mothers jewelery (decades of passed down family
treasures) and where my father stashed his 300oz of ASE's just to name a
couple things. I got to the house within a couple minutes and pretty soon
there was 10 cops and a few detectives searching the house for prints and
clues.
After about a half hour an officer came over and asked us to follow him to
the back the garage (not attached to the house). There behind the garage was
all the flat screen TV's and a few bags, one bag that i could see had a few
ASE tubes poking out . The thief or thieves had apparently come to the
house on foot with the intent to return with a vehicle to round of the goods
the had lifted from the house and unable to carry. Somehow they were
spooked and left in a hurry, which made sense because several rooms had
electronics/valuables packed in bags ready to go that had simply been left.
After about 4 hours the detectives let us look through the bags after
evidence had been gathered (they took all the ASE's out and took the tubes
for printing, and found several foot prints in the dirt). To our amazement
EVERYTHING that was missing was sitting in those bags!!! Not a single ring
or coin did they take in their pockets. The only thing they snagged was
about 100.00 in cash (insignificant in perspective). The police talked to us
for some time about what would be happening next and yada yada and they
left.
I know you all will have some basic questions that I'm going to take a
second to explain along with my fathers personality which will help you
understand what was going on. No there was no home security alarm (I have
harped on them for years since they live alone without a dog it would be a
good idea). They didn't have a safe to hold their PM's (I offered to store
it in mine since its huge and they wouldn't get one). My dad is a great guy
in so many ways but he is very very laid back and a trusting person. He is
super non confrontational and doesn't worry about too much. The way his home
was unprotected is stupid, I know this so feel free to leave those comments
out. I can say that today shocked him in a way I have never seen and he
will be making permanent changes to the home.
So I told my dad, these scumbags know they had 30-40K sitting behind that
garage and I think they are going to try and come back tonight and see if
its still sitting out there. I am going to sit in the loft of the garage,
with a few guns and wait up all night in the dark and see if they are dumb
enough to give it a try. He didn't think it was a good idea, but the thought
of catching someone who was willing to invade the one place you can feel
safe to take from you, well it was enough to get him to roll with it.
So starting at 10 PM there I sat in the dark watching the cars and counting
how many times the same one would go by. I noticed by midnight the same
Subaru had come by 3 times (small residential street that usually get a car
every hour or so past 10). Well at 1:05 this morning that same Subaru pulled
up and parked! My heart jumped like you wouldn't believe. As my mind was
trying to decide if this was real or not a guy got out of the car and I
watched him start to creep down the driveway slowly towards the garage I'm
sitting in . I'm sure this is where some of you would claim to gun down the
trespasser but around here they have to threaten my life to justify lethal
force so I silently dialed 911. This jackass went right to the spot where
the goods were stashed and saw it was gone. He started to creep back around
the garage when the first cop pulled up, he turned around and jumped the
fence behind out house (heading opposite of the police). I yelled at them
what he had done and the chase was on! It was about 5 minutes later another
cop came up the house to inform us that they had lost the perp in the
neighborhood but a dog was on the way. My heart sunk like a rock...
The dog came about 10 minutes later and amazingly picked up the scent, it
took about 5 more minutes and they found him hiding in some bushed less than
a block away! I guess the dog chewed his leg up really good which was
freaking fantastic. They picked me up and had me identify him which was easy
to do since he was literally within 15 feet of me as he approached the
garage (the loft was pitch dark and I was hidden with the perfect view from
the window). This guy was a classic grade A screw up. He is 19 years old,
two felony's for burglary already and his sister had called the cops on him
3 hours after he broke into my folks place for breaking into her place!!! He
has been living in a town about an hour away and just showed up a week ago
to mooch off family in the area. They got a written statement from me and
told us we would hear from them once they went through trying to link this
guy to the burglary via gathered evidence from earlier.
I am pretty sleep deprived so I hope this all made sense, but right now I
can't tell you how good I feel that I was able to get the guy busted. It has
been emotionally draining and gut wrenching watching my folks have their
privacy invaded like this. Like I said the area is low crime and an event
like this has been extremely frightening for my folks.
I will update this thread as information comes in.